Of {17} this have been three general kinds: the CHIEF, both in
antiquity and excellency, which they that did imitate the
inconceivable excellencies of God; such were David in the Psalms;
Solomon in the Song of Songs, in his Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs;
Moses and Deborah in their hymns; and the writer of Job; which,
beside others, the learned Emanuel Tremellius and Fr. Junius do
entitle the poetical part of the scripture; against these none will
speak that hath the Holy Ghost in due holy reverence. In this kind,
though in a wrong divinity, were Orpheus, Amphion, Homer in his
hymns, and many others, both Greeks and Romans. And this poesy must
be used by whosoever will follow St. Paul's counsel, in singing
psalms when they are merry; and I know is used with the fruit of
comfort by some, when, in sorrowful pangs of their death-bringing
sins, they find the consolation of the never-leaving goodness.

The {18} SECOND kind is of them that deal with matter philosophical;
either moral, as Tyrtaeus, Phocylides, Cato, or, natural, as
Lucretius, Virgil's Georgics; or astronomical, as Manilius {19} and
Pontanus; or historical, as Lucan; which who mislike, the fault is
in their judgment, quite out of taste, and not in the sweet food of
sweetly uttered knowledge.

But because this second sort is wrapped within the fold of the
proposed subject, and takes not the free course of his own
invention; whether they properly be poets or no, let grammarians
dispute, and go to the THIRD, {20} indeed right poets, of whom
chiefly this question ariseth; betwixt whom and these second is such
a kind of difference, as betwixt the meaner sort of painters, who
counterfeit only such faces as are set before them; and the more
excellent, who having no law but wit, bestow that in colours upon